From: John Howell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Finale] Contrabass playback
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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At 8:58 PM +0100 1/25/05, Daniel Wolf wrote:
>John Howell wrote:
>
>>At 10:20 PM -0800 1/24/05, Chuck Israels wrote:
>>
>>>Of course, if you followed that logic all the way through, you'd
>>>write the trombones in the tenor clef a lot of the time, and I
>>>don't do that. And I still have to decipher the alto clef for the
>>>viola parts (shame on me for not getting used to that by now). If
>>>I wrote more string music, I'd probably get to the point where
>>>that was as transparent to me as the saxophone transpositions are.
>>
>>
>>You would, I guarantee it. And not only for writing, but for
>>playing. Early music often comes in a variety of clefs, and it's a
>>little scary to start playing a part on, say, tenor recorder, in
>>alto clef, and by the end of the piece be reading automatically!
>>
>>John
>>
>And don't forget the extra benefit of gaining fluency in all the
>clefs -- transposition at sight becomes a breeze. IMO, this should
>still be a part of every musician's training.
Yes, and Boulenger was still teaching them, according to one of her
students. And don't forget, we're not talking just about orchestral
clefs, but the full system of 9 movable clefs: G clef on the 1st or
2nd line; C clef on the first, second, third, or 4th line; F clefs on
the 3rd, 4th or 5th line. You need to know the whole system to use
it for instant transposition. I write for horn seldom enough that it
really helps to think of it as being in mezzo-soprano clef, concert C
on the second line.
John
I can't remember not knowing how to read the grand staff, but C clefs still give me more trouble than they should. I remember, from scoring my symphony for brass, that a tenor clef trombone and a Bb trumpet playing an octave higher use the same lines and spaces. There are other tricks too, I bet.
Is the Morris and Ferguson book Preparatory Exercises in Score Reading still in print? That's a good set of exercises to master different clefs. Hope I'm not showing my age...
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